


One More Try

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Boarding School, Multi, Post-X3, ensemble fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 09:53:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Alcatraz, Logan and Ororo work on rebuilding the X-Men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Try

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in Dec. 2009

1.

 

Logan was sitting in a diner in Paterson, New Jersey, spoon poised over a cup of coffee, when Kitty asked him that question. He set the spoon down and just looked at her.  
  
She was smiling. “Come on. Don’t be all whatever, Logan. You guys don’t need to hide it anymore. We all know that you’re together.”  
  
He continued to stare.  
  
Bobby tensed. He cast Kitty a glance. Logan could tell that Bobby didn’t approve of where Kitty had just taken the conversation. Probably because he was still slightly afraid of Logan.  
  
Logan looked back and forth between Bobby and Kitty. “What?”  
  
“We want the details, Logan. Spill.” Kitty sat back and flashed another smile. “It’s not nice of you to keep secrets from us. We’re a team, remember?”  
  
Logan was thinking.  
  
“You’re about to send me in to buy weapons off of the Nasty Boys, and you won’t tell us about the big romance between you and Storm.”  
  
He looked down at his coffee and picked up the spoon again. “Who’s ‘we’?” he said. “Who all knows?”  
  
Kitty laughed and reached over to gently punch Bobby’s arm. “I told you,” she said to him. She glanced back and Logan. “Bobby and I made a bet. I made the bet that you are a couple and that I could get you to fess up. That’s twenty bucks, Bobby.”  
  
Logan shook his head and took a sip. He looked at Bobby. Thought about saying something to him about the foolishness of betting against Kitty Pryde, but thought better of it. “Is this true?”  
  
Bobby gave a small smile.  
  
“She just took you for twenty dollars?”   
   
“We want details, Logan,” Kitty said, beaming.  
  
Logan covered his forehead with one hand.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Bobby said, perhaps sensing that Logan’s discomfort needed to be ameliorated. “We’re the only ones who figured it out.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kitty said. “No one else suspects. Just us. But you can tell us everything.”  
  
Logan set his elbows on the table. How to tell a couple of idealistic, romantic eighteen-year-olds that having sex and being a couple were two different things? He didn’t want to be the one to shatter that dream.  
  
“So when did it happen?” Kitty asked. “When did you guys get together?”  
  
“You want details,” he said.  
  
She nodded.  
  
“Ask Storm,” he said, reaching in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He suspected that the diner was smoke free, but he was going to try to get away with it anyway. “You two ready to go?”  
  
They looked at each other. And then looked at him. “Yeah, we’re ready,” Bobby said.  
  
###  
  
Logan hated this kind of work. Of all of things he did in his new life, sending Kitty Pryde into dangerous situations was the most unpleasant. It made him nervous. She could handle the work, but he felt that she wasn’t right for it. She was smart as hell, sure—but too nice. Something about her was just too milk-fed. He would have rather sent Rogue—who was no longer a mutant, of course—or Jubilee—who was too young. Those two had an edge. Kitty was too clean, too cared-for. But she was all they had.  
  
They were trying to figure out whether or not the Nasty Boys were behind the recent spate of cure clinic bombings in the tri-state area. Kitty was inside of the boarded up storefront that served as a makeshift headquarters, and she was talking to these shitheads. She was posing as a disgruntled teenage punk turned homegrown terrorist. Trying to volunteer for the cause. Logan and Bobby waited, listened in on the headphones.  
  
Logan was in the back seat, eyes closed, head down. He willed himself not to breathe as she got closer to closing the deal.  
  
“She’ll be okay,” Bobby whispered.  
  
Logan opened his eyes. Bobby was sitting in the captain’s seat, but he had turned around to look at Logan.  
  
“Shh,” Logan said. He needed to hear every word that Kitty spoke.  
  
When she emerged from the building three minutes later, she started to walk down the street as they had planned. He told Bobby to get in the driver’s side and start the car. They’d pick her up at the bicycle shop down the street.  
  
He still didn’t feel any kind of relief.  
  
###  
  
Kitty had asked him when he and Storm had first gotten together. A nice way of saying “hooked up” or “got weak” or just “caved in.” The whole thing had been a long time coming. He didn’t know, looking back, how they’d held out for so long.  
  
And the thing was, he remembered the exact date, time, and place, too. He wondered what Storm thought, what she remembered or chose to forget. He just couldn’t figure it all out. The woman was unreadable to him—except in bed. Except when they were together, just giving and taking from one another, just trying to wrestle something other than plain ordinariness out of a situation that had lasted longer than either of them had expected. At those times, he could see that she really liked it. Liked him, he thought, somewhat smugly. And then he realized that he really had no idea how she felt about him. It was possible that she just liked it, not him. And why was he so intent on proving otherwise? Oh, it drove him crazy.  
  
They were just friends, he thought. Friends who just happened to need something from each other once in a while. But friendship in and of itself was something he didn’t just share with anybody.  
  
When he got back from Paterson, he went straight to her office. Didn’t bother to knock.  
  
She was sitting at the computer. “I assumed it went well,” she said, without looking up. “Because you didn’t call.”  
  
“How long are we going to have to keep cooperating with law enforcement?” Logan said, flopping down in the chair. “What a pain. All that red tape.”  
  
She let go of the mouse and wheeled her chair around to face him. “What did they say?”  
  
“That what Kitty got was good enough for now.”  
  
“Good,” Storm said, her eyes lingering on his for just a moment longer than usual. She gave him a small, knowing smile. “Leave the file and I’ll go through it. I appreciate you covering for me. Thanks, Logan.”  
  
“Kitty asked about us,” he blurted out. Then he felt weird. He didn’t know what had possessed him to say that.  
  
The smile dropped from her face. She took a slow, measured breath. “So you told her that there is no us, right?”  
  
“Of course,” he said. Too easily perhaps.  
  
“Do you know where she got that idea?”  
  
He set his hand on his thigh. That night, he knew, she’d drag the palm of her hand along his thigh before tugging at his belt. And then his zipper. He looked up. “No. I mean, I have a feeling that it was just speculation on her part.” He paused. “Wishful thinking, maybe.” He smiled. (He couldn’t help it.)  
  
She blinked. “Yeah.”  
  
He got up from the chair and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “So what else do you need me to do today?”  
  
She grinned. “Well, the kids want to go see the new Harry Potter tonight.”  
  
Oh, anything but that. “Again? Didn’t I just take them to see that?”  
  
“Probably. Or something similar. I know. Those movies all run together.” Her hands lingered on the desktop. “Well, I can take them if you’re not up to it.”  
  
“No, that’s okay.” He only had to look at her to know that she was exhausted. Running the school, even in the summer, was a big task, and Storm had taken on the work of the professor and Scott and Jean. Logan did what he could, but he knew that he lacked the necessary knowledge to search for and write up grants, hire new teachers, design curriculum, and keep everything in line with state and federal guidelines. Not to mention the actual teaching thing. He had his stuff—expense reports and operations and inventory—but none of that was as onerous as her highly specialized list of things to do. So when she put him in charge of the clinic bombings, he knew it was because she really could not take on another task.  
  
That night she would be tired, he thought. Too tired to stay up and talk or laugh afterwards, which they sometimes did together. Sometimes, after sex or between rounds, they sat there and talked about a few things, whatever came up, whatever. Ho-hum things about some student’s antics, or something that had once happened to him up in Saskatchewan, or something Bobby and Peter did when they thought no one was looking. And usually these conversations went best when they weren’t really looking at each other, or when they were lying slightly apart, looking up at the ceiling. Last time they’d talked, he’d taken the initiative to drape his arm across her abdomen—just some little gesture of closeness. She’d gone still. “You should probably get back to your room,” she whispered. He said, “Yeah,” coming back to himself, realizing that this bed, this place, her—none of it was really his.  
  
That night she would put off sleep and stay up for him. Perhaps she’d be grateful that he’d taken the kids to a Harry Potter movie so that she could get some work done. So maybe she’d be aggressive with him. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d just want him to give it to her. He liked her either way—wrestling him into his place, or open and willing. But no matter how hard he pushed she pushed back until they were one in the same, together, all wrapped up and inside of one another. That’s what he liked about this whole arrangement. He hadn’t found that kind of give-and-take balance, sexual or otherwise, with anyone in a long time—maybe ever. Tonight, maybe she’d dig her heel into the small of his back and lift herself off the bed to meet him, or maybe she’d bite the inside of his neck, knowing full well she wouldn’t leave a bruise. Maybe she’d be on top and he’d press his hand against the underside of her breast and keep her there for longer than either of them anticipated.  
  
He thought about all of these things. He thought about them all the time. He was glad she couldn’t read his mind.  
  
It all started a couple of months ago. He wouldn’t say that he planned it, but he certainly hadn’t been taken by surprise, either. The first time seemed strange and inevitable—strange because it happened so quickly—and inevitable because after they did it he looked up and couldn’t believe that they had never done it before. It was spring and she’d found him in the garden working on the fence, and she’d been wearing a white shirt, something that he liked because he felt it matched her hair and fit her well, and she was beautiful, and he knew this, but they’d never gotten along. They’d spent the winter grumpy and irritated. Avoiding each other or squabbling occasionally. He didn’t like the fact that she was controlling, and she didn’t like that he did things in the order he wanted to, and she must have suspected that he’d leave eventually anyway. The few times that they joked or talked or got along felt like a Christmas truce. He knew that she found him uncouth and uncooperative. She was only partly right.  
  
So that afternoon in the garden, when he reached over and kissed her, she must have thought he was just trying something out, just messing with her. But he’d been thinking about it.  
  
Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d taken Bobby, Kitty, and Rogue to the post office to mail the acceptance slips and deposits to their chosen colleges. “Certified mail,” Kitty said. “Means we know it got there. So we don’t have to worry about them offering our spots to anyone else.”  
  
He waited in the car while they dashed into the post office. Even Rogue looked happy, somewhat liberated in the warm spring afternoon. All winter she’d seemed strange and subdued, as if she was just waiting for things to end. Now she looked lighter. He sat back in the seat. The kids were moving on. In four months they’d be off somewhere else. Bobby and Kitty weren’t going that far away—Connecticut—but Rogue was going far upstate, some college near the Canadian border.  
  
He gripped the steering wheel. He didn’t know why the realization unsettled him. Maybe because he was usually the one who did the leaving. He didn’t know what it was to be left behind. Why did Rogue have to go so far away? It was five hours; he remembered because he’d taken her to visit the school that March. He had hoped, at the time, that she would choose the school that was closer to the Institute.  
  
So the next day when he kissed Storm, he didn’t want to think that all of this was connected. He wanted to think that these incidents were independent—floating variables, lazy determinants, accidents. And luckily, Storm kissed him back. And didn’t seem that surprised either. And that was all the encouragement he needed. Later that night, when he went to her room, he knew that he just wanted to find something out, and that she did too. He stood in the doorway and asked her something. She told he could come in, and he did, and shut the door behind him, but she didn’t move back, so he moved forward, and the space between them closed, and they were kissing each other again, and this time more forcefully, and he reached under her shirt, and she surprised him by just taking it off.  
  
They found the bed.  
  
She helped pull his shirt off and then went back to taking her own clothes off—bra, pants, everything else. There was something smooth and familiar about her touch—practiced but not predictable. She seemed not to hesitate or falter, and she also seemed interested. Then, once they were both naked she did hesitate a little. “Hold on,” she whispered between kisses and pulled away.  
  
He took his hand from her left breast and looked up. “I have something,” he said, reaching for his pants, which lay crumpled at the end of the bed. Then he realized how it must have looked to her—like he’d planned the entire thing, that he’d come to her room coolly, premeditatedly, looking for sex.  
  
She paused for a second and then nodded. “Okay.” And leaned back against the mattress.  
  
When he rose to enter her he fumbled a little bit, slipped and ended up jamming her shoulder against the headboard. He gasped and pulled back, and she smiled and reached for him again. This time he braced himself against the headboard and entered her and covered her mouth with his. When they were locked together he tried not to think about this, tried not to think in terms of right or wrong, and that was easy because the world left him immediately and he was simply grasping for something, and coming to terms. He just felt that he was reaching. And the pleasure bloomed behind his eyes and he must have groaned or made some kind of noise because she shushed him and then tightened her legs around him, her finger on his lips. He was alert to the change in her breathing, the tell-tale signal that this was good for her too, and that she was going to come.  
  
And she did, and he did too, and afterwards he caught her mouth with his and kissed her, more deeply than either of them had expected him to.  
  
They passed several minutes in silence. “I should go,” he finally whispered, and then watched for her reaction.  
  
“Okay,” she said. She didn’t seem disappointed. But she didn’t seem relieved, either. (This was why she frustrated him so much.)  
  
That night, when he went back to his room, he couldn’t sleep. The sex had done him good—except where it hadn’t. He wondered if he should leave. He’d overstepped his boundaries here; he and Storm shouldn’t mess around like this, if only for the fact that he didn’t know how she might react, or what she might require from him. He knew she didn’t love him, and he didn’t love her either. But what if this incident made things weird? They were friends, finally; the long winter was gone and the summer was ahead of them, and he didn’t particularly care to ruin things. (He always had a feeling that he was going to ruin things anyway.)  
  
She surprised him (again) by caring less than he thought she would, and perhaps less than he would have liked. “I’m sorry,” he said on the morning after, when he met her in the stairwell and it was early and no one else was up. “That’s okay,” she said, smiling. Which was not to be confused with “I wanted you to.” And then she said that she had fun but that they probably shouldn’t do it again.  
  
Except that they did. Of course they did. First, weekly. Then, a few times a week. As spring stretched toward summer, they had sex frequently, and he found himself responding to the mere suggestion of it, to her presence, to her voice. And she was probably responding to him too, but she didn’t let on.  
  
On the last day of school she went outside to greet the parents and say goodbye to the kids who had someplace to go for three months. He stayed away from the parents. He skulked around the mansion and kept things in line for the others, some of whom had started acting out—in jealousy, perhaps. (One kid, Michael, had drawn a large, purple penis on the door of a room of a girl he disliked. Logan just handed him some paint and told him to fix it.)  
  
He was making his way through the professor’s old study and stepped out onto the balcony where he ran into Storm. She was sitting on the bench, arms wrapped around her torso, and she was crying. Sobbing quietly.  
  
“Oh my God,” he said, and went to her. “What happened? Are you okay?”  
  
She looked up, her eyes red. She unfolded her arms and worked hard to collect herself. Forced a smile. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” A look of embarrassment flickered over her face. “Damn,” she said.  
  
He stopped and just stood there. “Do you want me to come back later?”  
  
She looked down for a second, and then just chuckled. “This is going to sound so stupid.” She took a deep breath and wiped away her tears. Smiled at him. “I just—this feels so stupid but . . . every year I get sad when I see the kids leave.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. “I don’t think it’s stupid.” But he thought it was slightly insane. He didn’t feel that way about the kids. Not most of them. He was kind of relieved to see them go. Now the mansion would be quieter. He could get more work done. Did he feel it was his duty to protect the kids? Yes. Did he like them? Sometimes. Would he miss them? No.  
  
“It is, it is dumb.” She sighed. “Jean and Scott used to make fun of me. They called it empty-nest syndrome and they were sort of merciless when it came to teasing. But I don’t know. Sometimes a lot can happen in a summer. Sometimes they don’t come back—their parents aren’t willing to pay the money anymore, or they just want to go back to public school and live at home. Who knows.”  
  
He walked over and sat next to her. Put his arm behind her (not around her). Thought about what to say.  
  
“You think I’m crazy,” she said.  
  
“I think we should get out, darlin’.” He crossed one leg over the other and gave her a sideways glance. “Celebrate.”  
  
“But the kids—”  
  
“We’ll put Bobby and Kitty in charge of them. But you and I are overdue for drinks.”  
  
So they went out that night to a restaurant—nicer than the ones he usually frequented—and sat in a booth and ate and talked and drank. She ran a hand along his thigh. He didn’t flinch when she touched his crotch. “Summer’s always fun,” she whispered, and he kissed her right there in public, and she let him.  
  
“At least you’re not crying anymore,” he said, and she laughed.  
  
When they got back to the mansion, they barely made it to her room. Afterwards she curled up against him, her hand on his chest, and he wondered if it was the wine or if something between them had changed.  
  
He ran a hand through her hair. “Why don’t you ever want me to call you by your real name?”  
  
“Because you mispronounce it,” she said, sighing against him. “It’s just not how we know each other.”  
  
He could tell she was about to drift off to sleep. He started to pull away.  
  
She opened her eyes. “You know, you don’t have to go. You can spend the night here.”  
  
He reached for his shirt. He couldn’t stay with her, but it was nothing personal. “I have nightmares,” he said.  
  
Her eyes lingered over him. “How often?”  
  
He moved to the edge of the bed and glanced back at her. “Every time I sleep.” He pulled on his shirt. Then he bent over her and kissed her one more time.  
  
When he left her that night, he knew he’d gotten attached. He knew she probably had too. And that just made things complicated because he knew he knew he would someday have to leave, have to untangle himself from this situation and move on. It was just how it worked. He couldn’t stay. And he knew that if he left, he would upset her. She might not ever forgive him now. But no—that wasn’t true. She would be upset just for a little while, and then things would go on without him, and the kids would sustain her, and the school and team would still be hers. She would forget about how he once made her feel, how he had once offered her something unexpected but fleeting. But he had nothing but a few memories to revisit and rehash, and she—all of this—would become one of them. It would grow bigger as time passed. It would seem more important than it was, more defining. He wouldn’t be able to just let it go.

 

 

2.

 

Early morning visits were for serious lovers, and Logan knew this, but he decided to take his chances. One June morning, when the dawn was just starting to touch the windows, he put on his clothes, went down the hall, and entered her room.  
  
He hadn’t slept all night.  
  
She was lying on her side, facing away from him, the sheet pulled over the length of her body. Deep in sleep, he judged. He could tell by the sound of her measured breathing. This was so mean—mean to wake her. But he just couldn’t help it—he felt impish. And the night had been long, and he was tired of being alone. He was bored. He slid onto the bed next to her and set a hand on her shoulder. Shook her just slightly.  
  
She awoke with a start, her head jerking from the pillow. “What? What’s wrong?” Her voice was thick from sleep.  
  
He kept his hand on her shoulder. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help it. He liked the warmth of her body. “I can’t believe you.”  
  
She turned her head to look at him.  
  
“You left your door unlocked. That’s not safe. Anyone could just come in.”  
  
She lay back down. “Maybe I want them to.”  
  
“What do you want me to do today?”  
  
She groped for the clock on her nightstand and turned it around. “Logan, it’s five in the morning. I want you to go back to bed for another two hours. We’ll talk about it at breakfast.”  
  
He was quiet. Then he said, “I’m done sleeping.”  
  
She clutched the sheet around her. “Do I look like I am? Goddamnit, Logan.” She breathed a sigh and then glanced back at him once more. “What the hell has gotten into you?”  
  
“I think we should start an early morning training regimen. Military-style. You, me, the kids. And then I think we should—” He paused, and then pressed his lips against hers. Then he kissed her neck. He felt her relax, the annoyance leaving her body as he gripped her left breast, traced her nipple through the fabric of her nightgown. She turned toward him. She was opening to him, getting used to the idea of him in her bed at five in the morning. She liked to sleep late, but she liked sex more. He was figuring these things out. She didn’t mind giving into him—not least of all because she got something out of it. She didn’t use sex to get what she wanted because sex was what she wanted. They were the same in that way.  
  
He pressed himself against her, started to take off his shirt.  
  
“Wait,” she said, pulling away. “Let me at least brush my teeth.”  
  
“No,” he said, reaching for her. “Forget it.” How to explain this without sounding crass? He liked the smell of morning on people—no, on her. The slight sweatiness, the carbon dioxide, the familiarity.  
  
She pulled away again. “Logan, I have to—”  
  
He grasped her again, this time more forcefully, his face just an inch from hers. He knew what she was saying.

She paused. Then relaxed. She trusted him.  
  
But when she was underneath him, he thought she looked sad, and he wondered if she was sad because of him, or because of this situation, or because of something else that had nothing to do with him. That was what concerned him the most—that these things going on with her, whatever they were, went on without him, or in spite of him. Underneath her skin was a world he knew nothing about. Her past, her mind—she kept it all hidden from him. And maybe rightly so. He wondered if she thought about the day he walked out on them to go find Jean, and he’d pushed her against the wall, but she hadn’t seemed surprised. So that was that.  
  
When they were finished, and they lay there all tangled up together, he felt bad for dragging her from sleep. Unlike him, she actually needed to sleep. And he could tell that she was tired. “Sorry,” he whispered quickly.  
  
She glanced over at him and laughed softly. “The hell you are.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Just . . . be quiet, Logan. I’m trying to rest.” She rolled over.  
  
For ten minutes they dozed. Then, down the hall, a door slammed and an angry voice trailed down the corridor. Another voice shushed. Logan opened his eyes and groaned. The goddamn Guthrie siblings, he guessed.  
  
“Alright,” Storm said, sitting up. “Go into the bathroom and take a shower.”  
  
“I’ll tell ‘em off,” he said, also sitting up.  
  
“Forget it,” she whispered, slipping her nightgown over her head. She reached for her bathrobe, which was draped over a chair. “I don’t want anyone to see you leaving my bedroom at five-thirty in the morning.”  
  
He almost rolled his eyes. Yeah. God forbid the kids find out that Mr. Logan and Ms. Munroe actually indulged each other once in a while. Half of them probably knew anyway, and the other half probably suspected. How to hide this kind of thing from a telepathic teenager? He couldn’t speak for her, but he knew he hadn’t been very discreet with his thoughts. “If they see me, I’ll tell them that you had a nightmare and I got you a glass of water. How’s that?”  
  
“I’ll see you at breakfast,” she whispered and hurried off to break up the fight.  
  
###  
  
The day was normal, lazy. The kids did their work, squabbled with each other, bitched to each other about the unfairness of having to go to school in the summertime, and then went to lie in the sun. Around two, Rogue showed up in the den with Sam and Artie in tow. “Is it okay if I take them to Friendly’s? We won gift certificates at the horse show and they’re about to expire.”  
  
He was standing over the desk, a pile of bank statements in front of him. He quickly sized up the situation. Wondered, for the twentieth time that month, what Rogue was doing playing older sister to those two. This was her new thing. She used to hang out with Kitty and Jubilee to do teenage girl things, but then she turned away from them. Now she was spreading herself among the younger kids as if it didn’t matter, as if she couldn’t bear to invest herself in anything else. She was counting down the days for when she could just go off to college and be a normal person among other normal people and do normal human things.  
  
They didn’t talk as much anymore. It bothered him. He didn’t know if her unwillingness to open up was just more fall-out from having taken the cure, or due to some inevitable shift in their relationship. Probably both. She was growing up and getting over him and shrugging off whatever protection or understanding or companionship he’d once provided. He wasn’t that special anymore. His life was at the school, and the school was about to be her past.  
  
Worse, though, was the fact that she passed unnoticed at the mansion now. Before, she’d been outgoing and approachable. Popular, he thought. Now she seemed invisible, and past the point of caring. She and Bobby had broken up months ago, but that was only part of it. She wasn’t even on Storm’s radar anymore, and Storm had been pissed after that whole cure thing.  
  
He gave her the once-over. She was wearing a hat and a tee-shirt that said “enterprising youth.” “Yeah, okay,” he said. Then, he amended that: “Better ask Storm.” He’d long ago learned his lesson about the dangers of not asking Storm first.  
  
“Seriously, Logan.” She glanced at the pile of work in front of him. Looked a little disgusted. “It’s Friendly’s.”  
  
“Then just ask,” he said, vaguely annoyed by her tone. “She’ll say yes.”  
  
“Then there’s no reason for me to ask if she’ll say yes.” She leaned against the table. “God, do you have to get permission for every little thing? It’s like she’s your boss.”  
  
“Yeah, how’d you guess,” he said. “So go ask her.”  
  
She sighed. Gathered the boys to her and stalked out of the room.  
  
Logan wanted to ask Storm about this Rogue thing—wanted to ask if this whole thing was normal, or if it was a phase, or if he’d maybe done something wrong—but he didn’t feel like bringing it up. Storm would just use his discomfort as an excuse to opine on the ethical dilemmas of the cure, of the fact that it gave mutants an all-too easy fix to their complicated problems. This was Storm’s new thing; she’d moved on from calling the cure “the coward’s way out” to saying it messed with mutants psychologically. “People think that it will solve their problems,” she said to him once. “Then they take the cure and get upset because their problems still remain. They find out that all of their issues—family, job, money—had little to do with their mutations in the first place. Then they realize that they’ve given up the very fabric of who they are, and for what.”  
  
Logan didn’t like being on the receiving end of these little sermons. He didn’t agree or disagree with Storm; he just didn’t care about other people’s choices. He cared about Rogue. He didn’t see the point in generalizing, or in trying to fit Rogue into some kind of pre-ordained schema. She was Rogue, not some textbook example.  
  
One night about a month ago, after he’d listened to Storm proselytize for a good ten minutes, he finally asked: “What the fuck are we doing protecting cure clinics, huh? Why send Kitty into these dangerous fucking situations to protect a bunch of cowards and the assholes who make money off of them?”  
  
She was sitting in the den, wading through a stack of files, trying to find the Cuckoo sisters’ medical release forms, and she stopped and looked up. “People deserve our protection, Logan. Even if we disagree with their choices.”  
  
He dropped himself onto the couch. Oh, she was so moral! “I don’t want to send Kitty undercover anymore. I don’t want her to have to do that.”  
  
Storm got up from the table. “She wants to. It’s her decision, not yours, and she’s old enough.”  
  
“Yeah, why not send Bobby or Peter instead then?”  
  
“Why, because they’re guys?” Storm laid a file on the table. “Kitty’s done a great deal of research. She’s good. She knows this cell inside and out, and her mutation is really useful in these situations.” She paused. “Look, I don’t like it either. It’s definitely not . . . Well, it is what it is.”  
  
Logan hated it when people said that.  
  
“I wasn’t much older than Kitty when we started the team,” Storm said. “But Kitty and Bobby and Peter—they already have more experience than we did.”  
  
Experience, Logan thought, in killing people. Alcatraz had been a baptism of sorts. He often wondered how the kids had inwardly reacted to that. If they’d had any problems, they’d hidden them from him. Maybe Storm had more insight. Or maybe not.  
  
“I just don’t like it,” Logan said.  
  
And Storm didn’t say anything.  
  
###  
  
That night he was sitting in the rec room, trying to get some work done while keeping an eye on the game at the same time. Some of the younger kids were off in the corner acting something out. At least, he guessedthey were acting something out. They kept saying the same things over and over again. “Don’t follow me,” one would say. Then another would say, “Don’t! Follow me.” Or “Don’t follow me.” He got the feeling that they were imitating something they’d heard on TV. It was getting irritating.  
  
Jones wandered into the room and sidled up to him. “Yo,” he said.  
  
Logan didn’t look up. He never responded when Jones tried to force this kind of familiarity on him. Not that he liked being “Mr. Logan” either. But goddamnit. It was like there was no middle ground with these kids.  
  
“I’m looking for Rogue,” Jones said. “Have you seen her?”  
  
He glanced up. “You mean she’s not here?”  
  
Jones shrugged. “I’m asking.”  
  
“She took Artie and Sam to get ice cream, but that was hours ago.”  
  
Jones looked hurt for a second. Then he recovered. “They’re upstairs. They said they hadn’t seen Rogue either. So . . .”  
  
Logan stood. Wondered if he should be worried. It wasn’t like Rogue to just walk off. Well, actually it was. That was the problem. When she walked off, she usually walked off for a solid reason. What if she’d left? What if she’d run away for good this time? His mind started to go places. He knew he was jumping to conclusions, but he couldn’t help it. It was just the way his mind worked.  
  
“Do you think it has something to do with the fact that there’s a car parked in the driveway?” Jones said.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I figured you knew. Yeah. There’s been a car parked in the driveway for the last hour and a half. There’s some guy in the backseat.”  
  
Logan steadied himself. “Inside the gate?”  
  
“Hells yeah,” Jones said. “Like I said, he’s in the driveway. We’ve been watching through the window. Artie even got the binoculars out. So far, nothing. Not a move out of the guy. I can’t believe you didn’t know this.”  
  
Logan was already in the hallway. He glanced down to see the huddle of kids in the corner. They were now very quiet. They all peered up at him. “Stay down,” he told them. He looked at Jones. “Keep everyone in here. No one move.”  
  
In the corner, one girl’s eyes got very wide and then started to tear. Somebody whimpered, and then the girl started to cry.  
  
Logan moved quickly down the hallway. He spotted Bobby and Kitty sitting together in an alcove. “Bobby,” he said, and headed for the door.  
  
They both looked at each and got to their feet. “Logan, what is it?” Kitty said.  
  
“There’s someone outside,” he said. He approached the door and looked through the window. It was almost dark, but he there it was, big as life—a small car parked on the other side of loop. It wasn’t running.  
  
“Who is it?” Bobby said from behind Logan.  
  
“I don’t know. It’s someone who got past the gate. Come with me.” He looked at Kitty. “You. Watch the kids.”  
  
“For crying out loud, Logan,” Kitty said, and she seemed a little excited. “Don’t tell me to stay inside. I’m totally there for this.”  
  
Storm appeared at the landing on the top of the stairs. “What’s going on?”  
  
“Someone’s outside and Logan thinks it’s a terrorist,” Kitty said.  
  
Storm dashed down the stairs. “Hold on. I’m coming.”  
  
Logan slowly opened the door and peeked outside. “You two,” he said to Bobby and Storm. “You take point. I’ll go.”  
  
“Logan—” Storm said.  
  
But Logan was already making his way from the porch to the loop. He stopped behind the lilac bush and took a better look at the car. Sniffed. This was someone distantly familiar, but someone he hadn’t seen in a while. That could be a lot of people. He looked back at Storm and Bobby. Nodded. Went forward.  
  
He was one bad twitch away from drawing his claws.  
  
The car was a white early ‘90s Ford Probe. He approached it from behind. Crouched down behind the car. Gathered himself. Then, pounced. He grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. (It wasn’t locked.) There was a guy on the backseat, lying under a blanket. He grabbed him by the leg and pulled him out of the car.  
  
The person made a noise, a noise of surprise and violation.  
  
And then the guy was on the gravel. Logan grabbed his arms, pulled him to his feet, and slammed his back against the car.  
  
“Logan!” Storm yelled. “Logan, stop!”  
  
Bobby came running forward, Kitty at his side.  
  
Logan looked. The guy in his grip was just a kid. Not just any kid—Warren! He let go. Then he pushed the kid into the car again—this time in disgust. He sighed. Took a step back. “Jesus, kid.”  
  
Warren clamped his eyes shut as if bracing himself. He was shaking.  
  
“Warren, Warren,” Storm said, approaching. “Are you okay?”  
  
He pulled away from Logan and huddled against the car, his arms crossed. Shielded his eyes with one hand. He was trying not to cry. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Please.”  
  
“What the hell are you doing here?” Logan said. They hadn’t seen Warren in more than a year. Last they heard, he was patching things up with his rich family and studying at Princeton. He hadn’t had any contact with them in a while. Hadn’t kept in touch.  
  
“Logan,” Storm whispered. She drew closer to Warren and put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” she told him. “It’s okay.”  
  
“I’ll go,” he said.  
  
“No, no, come inside.”  
  
“It’s just . . .” He dropped his hand and looked down. “I have nowhere to go. I just—” His voice broke, and then he sighed.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw Bobby put a hand on Kitty’s shoulder. “Come on,” he whispered, and they turned toward the house. Warren covered his eyes with his hand and sobbed.  
  
###  
  
“So what’s wrong with him?” Logan asked Storm later that night once everything had calmed down and most of the kids were in bed. They put Warren in the room of a girl who was on summer vacation and gave him something to eat. Then Storm calmed down the kids.  
  
She paused in front of him, put her hands on her hips. Then she moved to the cupboard to get a teabag. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”  
  
“There’s something wrong with a guy who parks his car outside, takes a nap, and doesn’t bother to knock or call first.”  
  
She turned around. “You scared him, Logan.” Her eyes skimmed over him. Then she turned away. Looked like she was remembering something. He could guess. “I think he left everything. College. His family. I think he’s been on his own for a while.” She put the kettle on the stove. “I don’t know why he didn’t call.”  
  
“Some people like to try to make it on their own first.”  
  
“I’m glad he came to us,” she said. “You need to calm down, though.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
She gave him another glance. “You got everyone all upset. You freaked him out, you got the kids all wound up—” She set her mug down.  
  
“It’s not like I didn’t have a reason to,” he said, but inside he was smarting.  
  
“No, but around these kids you really have to keep your emotions in check.” She paused. “You didn’t have to panic like that.”  
  
“I don’t—” He set his hand down on the table. “I don’t panic, Storm.”  
  
“Okay, you don't panic,” she said, but insincerely. She just didn’t want to fight.  
  
The back door swung open and slammed. Seconds later, Rogue appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, handbag slung over her shoulder. She set the car keys in the tray and gave them a small wave.  
  
He looked up. “Where the hell have you been?”  
  
Rogue stopped and leveled a gaze at him. “I was working, Logan. Remember? I have a job.”  
  
“Since when?”  
  
“Since last Thursday.” She rolled her eyes and then glanced at Storm. “My college won’t pay for itself. Damn.” She slipped from the doorway. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered as she retreated down the hall.  
  
###  
  
He wanted to go to Storm that night. He knew that, despite everything, she’d let him, let him into her bed, wrap her legs around him, dig her heels into him—and maybe that was the problem. What happened between them during the day had nothing to do with how she reacted to him at night, how she moved beneath him, or how she touched him. It all felt so unearned. A book with no ending.  
  
In the rec room he paged through a book. Then, decided to make the rounds. And wanted to check on this Warren kid. (He still just didn’t trust him—he couldn’t help it.) He stopped in front of Warren’s door. Listened. Then, very slowly, opened the door.  
  
Warren was awake. He was curled onto his side. He sat up and took stock of Logan. Wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and looked straight ahead.  
  
“Oh, sorry,” Logan said. “I thought you were—do you need anything?”  
  
Warren shook his head.  
  
“Sorry. About before,” Logan said.  
  
Warren looked down. “It’s okay,” he said. His voice was barely audible. “I know I shouldn’t have just parked there like that.”  
  
Logan leaned against the doorframe and took in the sight of the kid—his huge wings sagging against him and draped across the mattress. It was a hell of a mutation—hard to hide. But useful. Beautiful even. But when he looked at Warren he just saw someone who was deeply unhappy, and who had been unhappy for some time. Every muscle in his body seemed to slump, dispirited.  
  
“How long were you on your own?” Logan asked.  
  
“Three months.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to go to Seattle, but I knew the car wouldn’t make it.”  
  
Logan knew that the kid came from all kinds of money; the fact that he didn’t have a working car said something. “What’s in Seattle?”  
  
“A girl,” he whispered. “I could—I could have flown, but . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t want to go there anymore.”  
  
Logan nodded. “And your family?”  
  
“Still wants me to take the cure.” He looked sad—sadder than he’d looked before, if that was even possible. He turned away, sprawled across the bed.  
  
Logan felt a moment of awkwardness coming on. It was something he couldn’t avoid. He needed to be more like Storm—needed to make this situation warmer and more welcoming. “Well, you can stay here as long as you like.”  
  
“I—I appreciate that,” Warren said. “I . . . maybe I could help you?”  
  
“Of course,” Logan said, and only after he said that did he realize that Warren might have been asking to be let on the team. And Logan couldn’t give that kind of benediction. “Well, we’ll have to talk to Storm.”  
  
Warren’s eyes brightened. He looked relieved. Then he gave Logan a knowing look. “Thanks.”  
  
That night, when he gave in and finally went to Storm, he grabbed her hand when he came and held it there, and stayed there, wrapped up in her for moments afterward. She finally nudged him back and set a hand on his neck. But she didn’t push him away. She just looked at him. Then she draped her arms around him, pressed his head against her neck. There was no empty space between them. “Tomorrow,” she said, and she started to talk about what they were going to do. She made a list. “Mm-hmm,” he said in response, lulled to stillness by her voice. It occurred to him that she was trying to get him to fall asleep. For once. With her.

* * *

3.

 

 

 

Logan had been meditating in the den for fourteen seconds when he heard a knock at the door. He decided to ignore it. The knock only got louder. He rolled his eyes and pulled himself to his feet.

Warren stood on the other side of the door. “Um . . . Logan?”

Logan clutched the doorknob and just stared at him. (He did this a lot with Warren. It’s not that he didn’t like the kid. He simply didn’t have the patience for someone so quiet and equivocal. Kitty and Storm and Rogue appealed to him personally because they had opinions and had no trouble expressing them. Warren always seemed to second-guess himself.)

“There are cops outside,” Warren said quietly.

Logan jolted back to the scene. “What?”

“They’re at the front door. They have Artie and Jones.”

Logan had already pushed past Warren to head up the steps and down the corridor to the front door. He found Danielle hesitating in the threshold, her body turned away from him at an angle.

“Kid,” he said. “Go back to the rec room.” He nudged her out of the way. Pulled open the door to find two uniformed police officers on the front stoop, Jones and Artie standing between them. One officer was young and tall, with the physique of someone who spent hours working out. The other was short and middle-aged, but not fat.

The young one touched his transmitter and said some string of meaningless letters and numbers that Logan didn’t quite unpuzzle.

“Can I help you?” Logan asked.

The young one said, “Are you the guardian of these two boys?”

Logan eyed Jones and Artie. Jones had his hands folded in front of him as if praying. He didn’t look up. Artie stared at Logan as if waiting for the signal that it was okay to panic.

“What did they do?” Logan said.

“We found them riding in an ATV along Route 45,” the young officer said.

“Huh?” Logan said, stepping forward. He glared at Jones. “Where the hell did you two get an ATV?”

Jones cringed, very visibly, his mouth pulling to one side.

“Your neighbor reported one missing,” the officer said. “Luckily, he’s decided not to press charges. That’s why we’re here right now and not at the station.”

Logan’s grip on the door tightened. He felt his heart speed up.

“We just borrowed it,” Jones said, and Logan decided right then and there that he was going to kill both of them.

“Logan.” That was Storm’s voice.

He turned to find Storm behind him. She set one hand on his arm and caught his eyes, willing him to calm down. “I got this,” she whispered. “I got it. The children are watching. Take them into the rec room.”

He glanced over his shoulder to find that the entire population of the mansion was crowding into the hallway, trying to see past the door. The teenagers were standing in the hallway. A couple of the younger kids were standing on the stairs, stretching to see. One girl was leaning on the balustrade, arms clutching the wooden beams.

Storm slipped by him and out onto the front stoop. “Officers,” she said, her voice confident and concerned. “Let’s talk over here.” She led them down the steps along with Artie and Jones.

He watched. He knew that Storm hated outsiders, hated normal people, but he could never tell when he actually saw her interact with them. Her physical presence exuded a preternatural self-confidence that he, even on his best Zen day, could never come close to understanding.

The officers also seemed taken aback by her presence—a little fascinated, a little cowed. The tall one seemed to shrink while looking down at her, if that was even possible. The short one turned to look at her as they walked, his legs going forward, his torso bent toward her in what had to be an uncomfortable posture.

Logan wondered what they were thinking. He could guess. He bristled.

He didn’t like other people looking at her. In that sense, he was very predictable. One day he’d almost said something about the way she dressed—thought about asking if she’d worn that blouse for him (and he knew she hadn’t)—but he reconsidered his approach. He had no doubt that he’d survive electrocution, adamantium skeleton and all, but he just didn’t feel like going through that experience.

He back around again to look at the kids. Some were clamoring to look out the window of the front room. “Hey,” he said, with as much meanness as he could muster. “Get away from there. Get back to the rec room.”

One girl scurried toward him. “Mr. Logan, what’s going to happen? Are they going to jail?”

He almost said, I hope so. Instead, he took a breath and looked back in Storm’s direction one more time. Now she was standing under the tree. Smiling. But this, he knew, was her defensive position. She didn’t trust people, but she felt more comfortable dealing with them outside.

He wanted to be out there with her.

Instead, he turned to take the kids to the rec room. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing is going to happen.”

###

That night he followed her into her bathroom.

She was rubbing lotion on her legs and looked up. “Jesus Christ, Logan. Can I get some privacy?”

The lotion was “wild honeysuckle.” She’d been wearing it a lot.

She’d also been wearing—okay, yes, he’d noticed this—different underwear. Satiny, lacy stuff. He didn’t know why women felt the need to do that. Didn’t they understand that the underwear didn’t matter? What mattered was the fact that it came off.

“I told you not to leave your door open,” he said.

“Yeah, apparently you were right. Look,” she said, straightening. “I think we should call off the whole Fourth of July fireworks thing.”

“Why? Because of Jones and Artie?”

“Not just that,” she said, snapping the cap back on the bottle. “I just don’t think the two of us can manage taking the whole crowd to see the fireworks. Rogue is working that night. Peter and Kitty and Bobby are going up to Hollow Hills to stay in some cabin. They’re asking Warren to come with them.”

He thought for a second. “Are they having sex?”

She looked at him. “What?”

“Bobby, Warren, Peter, Kitty? Are they having sex?”

“With each other?”

He shrugged. “No, with the gardener. Who else?”

“You mean . . . you think they’re going to the cabin to have some kind of orgy?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I mean.” He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s possible. Anything’s possible. Why else go to a cabin, right. But what I was asking was whether or not they’re shaking down into certain combinations and permutations or whatever. Like, coupling off.”

Storm stared at him. Then she just laughed. She pushed past him and went into her bedroom. “Well Logan, if you must know.” She pulled back the covers from her bed. “Kitty loves Bobby, but he’s still a little hung up on Rogue.”

“He’s the one who broke up with her,” Logan pointed out.

“That doesn’t matter,” Storm said. “I’m not sure, but I think Peter likes Kitty, but she doesn’t like him back. Jubilee, however, is completely in love with Peter. Or at least she was until Warren showed up. Now she thinks Warren is just oh-so handsome. She calls him the hottest white boy she’s ever seen. And I have no idea who Warren likes.”

He leaned against her dresser and tried not to smirk. “And they told you this.”

“Of course not,” she said, slipping into bed. “Well, Kitty tells me a lot. She’s an open book.”

He uncrossed his arms and made his way to the opposite side the bed. “Does she ask you about us?” He pulled back the covers and got in, his clothes still on. He reached for her, sliding his hand along her waist, which was covered by her satiny nightgown.

“All the time,” she said. She reached for his hand. “That tickles.”

He drew closer to her. Kissed the underside of her jaw, her neck. “What do you tell her?” he whispered. That there is no us, he thought.

“That it’s not her business,” Storm said, leaning back, her hands on his shoulders.

He pressed his lips against hers. Tightened his arms around her. Decided, for the second time in an hour, that he should stop trying to think so much.

###

Fourth of July was uneventful. Logan and Storm planned for a barbecue, and Jubilee offered to do her best to put on a little homegrown fireworks show since they weren’t going to be able to go to the one downtown. Kitty, Bobby, Peter, and Warren packed their things and headed for a cabin up north.

“Keep your phones on,” Logan said when they were about to drive off.

They all stared up at him.

“I’m serious.” He leaned down to look in the passenger side window.

Kitty was behind the wheel. She winked at him. “We love you too, Logan.”

“I don’t know if we’ll have coverage,” Bobby said. Of course Bobby would be the one to point this out.

Warren and Peter were in the backseat. Peter said something to Warren and they both laughed.

“We’ll be safe,” Kitty said. And then they drove away.

Logan spent the rest of the day picking up supplies. He used the truck—mainly because Storm didn’t mind if he smoked in it—and drove over to Walmart. He threw some hotdogs and buns in the cart and then headed over to the housewares aisle.

Rogue was struggling to stack some plastic trashcans on a shelf, one inside the other. He spotted her immediately; he knew it was her before he even neared the aisle.

Her hair was coming loose from her ponytail, but her standard-issue Walmart shirt was tucked neatly into her pants.

He stopped the cart at the mouth of the aisle. “Hey kid.”

She turned her head to look at him. Straightened. “Hey.” She smiled—as if she’d forgotten that she wasn’t supposed to like him anymore. “Can I help you find something?”

“Sparklers,” he said, rolling the cart toward her. “I need sparklers.”

“We don’t sell those here.”

“Crap,” Logan said. “I’ve been all over town looking for them.”

“Well, there’s a seasonal store on route seven. At the strip mall. They could probably set you up there. Unless they’re sold out.”

“Yeah.” Logan leaned over the cart, his elbows resting on the handle. He knew he wouldn’t have the time.

She eyed his cart. “You’ll need more hotdogs than that. I thought you’d know that by now. Those boys eat everything in sight. Make sure you get some marshmallows, too. Artie loves marshmallows.”

“Artie’s not coming to the party,” Logan said. “Neither is Jones.”

“That’s right, I forgot.”

Artie and Jones were grounded for the rest of the summer. Period. They were not partaking in school outings or parties until school started again, and they were responsible for both bathroom and kitchen duty until August. This was Storm’s idea of punishment. Logan would have rather pinned them to a tree and left them there all night and then forgiven them in the morning. The punishment he advocated was physical and strenuous but over quickly, one that ensured quick retribution and total absolution. Storm’s punishment was long and drawn-out and psychological. Isolation. Cold shoulder. Public shaming.

He remembered how Storm had treated Rogue after she’d taken the cure. Technically, Storm hadn’t done anything wrong or overtly nasty. But she’d made Rogue feel bad. She’d withheld encouragement, academic or otherwise. She’d simply been cold. It was something that Logan had a difficult time forgiving her for, even now. It was something they didn’t talk about.

But Rogue seemed over it. She seemed to have gotten over everything.

“Save me a hotdog,” she said. “Oh, and a slice of watermelon, if you can?” She tapped her fingers against the metal price tag fixture.

“What time will you be home?”

“Late. I’m closing.”

Logan opened his mouth to tell her that she should just forget work when he caught a glimpse of a short middle-aged man striding down the aisle with a clipboard under his arm. Change rattled in his pockets.

“Marie,” the man said, “Rachel needs your assistance in aisle seven.” He moved immediately to look at Logan. “Sir, can I help you find anything today?”

Logan stood there. Then gestured to the plastic garbage containers behind Rogue. “She was just selling me a trashcan.”

Rogue reached down and plucked a container from the bottom shelf and handed it to Logan without looking at him.

“Excellent,” the man said before reminding Rogue that she needed to get to aisle seven. He walked away.

Rogue rolled her eyes and walked with Logan to the end of the aisle.

“God, that’s your boss?” Logan whispered.

“Well, it’s like they say,” she whispered. “Bosses are like assholes. Everyone has one.” She smiled. Then the smile fell from her face. (Perhaps she was remembering who Logan’s boss was.) She cleared her throat. “Just don’t let the Guthries take over the karaoke machine. They’ve pretty much ruined any fond memories I had of Grease. It’s tragic.”

Logan put the trashcan in his shopping cart and headed for the check-out.

###

When Kitty and Bobby and Peter and Warren returned home on Monday, Logan was waiting. He tried to make it look like he hadn’t been waiting—he was standing on the porch, thinking about having a cigar and skimming through a tattered copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude (which had belonged to Scott)—when they pulled up.

They shuffled past him to go inside. He glanced up at each of them as they walked past, trying to detect some shift in the air between them.

“Did you have a nice time?” he asked. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned against the pillar.

“The best,” Kitty said. Her expression didn’t change. She moved past him to go into the house. She smelled faintly of shampoo and smoke. They must have had a campfire.

Warren nodded at him.

“Wings,” Logan said, reaching forward and tapping the spine of his book against Warren’s chest. “You got a minute?”

Warren stopped in his tracks. “Yeah, sure Logan.”

He asked Warren to fly up to the roof to fix a couple of shingles that had blown off in a weekend thunderstorm. But really, he was looking at Warren for some kind of sign. He wanted to know what had really happened during this camping trip.

But Warren was impenetrable as always. Infuriatingly serene.

Logan rattled off a series of instructions for fixing the shingles. (Warren was an eager, conscientious worker, but he had no idea of how to do anything.)

As Logan talked, Warren’s gaze wandered to the threshold. His eyes followed the others. He seemed stunned, distracted, and then—strangely pacified. And that was it—that was the signal. Warren was definitely getting laid. With whom? Logan guessed Kitty, but perhaps that was too obvious. Perhaps Bobby or Peter? He didn’t know if any of them was gay—he hadn’t felt like asking. But it didn’t surprise him. Nothing did. He needed to ask Storm about it. She’d probably want to know why he was so interested—and to be honest, he didn’t know why he was so interested.

Logan felt smug, though he didn’t know why. He spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with the roof repair and chatting with the gardener. At half past three, he finally made his way into Storm’s office.

She was sitting behind her computer but had taken off her shoes. That was a good sign.

“Hey,” he said.

She didn’t look up. “Hey.”

“We need to pay the gardener.” He closed the door to the office behind him. “We haven’t paid him in over a month.”

“How did that happen?” Storm opened the top drawer of her desk to take out the checkbook.

“No,” Logan said. “Cash. He’s not legal, remember?”

Storm slowly closed the checkbook and looked up at Logan, a pissed-off expression grazing her face. It was, he thought, a harbinger. “I thought you said you were hiring a new gardener. Logan, we can’t have undocumented people working here. If someone found out? Disaster.”

“Okay, just get him some cash and we’ll talk about it later.”

“Logan!” Storm set her hand down on the desk. “Logan, don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Blow me off. It drives me crazy when you do that! I run this school. I have an obligation to make sure everything’s above board. And I told you to fire the guy a month ago. Why didn’t you just do it?”

He sighed. Took a step back. “Guy has a family, Storm.”

“And that’s sad, Logan, and I’m sorry for him. But we can’t just go around breaking the law like that. Not here.”

“I’m not legal either. We’ve talked about that.”

Storm closed her eyes and took a breath as though willing herself to calm down. When she opened them she looked up at him. “Logan . . .” She took another breath. “I forgot.” She put her hand on the phone. “I have to call Hank about that. Thanks for reminding me.”

He set his hand on hers. Caught her eyes. Smirked. Tried not to feel so goddamn smug. “Because if I got deported, you’d miss me.”

“Logan, getting deported isn’t something to laugh about.”

He didn’t let go of her hand. “You’d miss me,” he said again, and this time very seriously.

“Because God knows I can’t run this place on my own. I just don’t want to think about what that would look like.”

He took her hand in his. Then, placed two fingers on her wrist. Her pulse was a little on the quick side. “Don’t worry. I won’t get deported.”

Her hand relaxed.

“And if I did, I would just come back.”

She tensed again. He felt her pulse speed up. She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. “You would. Right.”

He let go of her wrist and straightened. Put his hands in his pockets. “I would.”

She looked away. Cleared her throat and opened the bottom drawer of her desk where the petty cash was kept. Took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the box and counted several bills. “Here’s two months’ pay. That’s his severance package.” She got up from her chair to come around to the other side of the desk.

Logan reached for her, grasping her arms and squeezing. “I would come back.” He moved his hands to her shoulders. Grazed her neck with his thumb. “I would miss you.”

She raised her eyes to look at his. “I—”

He kissed her, pulling her closer with a certain roughness that he knew she was okay with, that she liked. He felt her set the cash down on the desk.

They made love on the floor behind the desk, quickly, not bothering to get completely undressed and hoping, vaguely, that no one would choose that exact moment to come into her office. (He remembered that he hadn’t locked the door.) When they were finished—when he was certain that she’d gotten as much out of it as he could give her in that limited amount of time and space—they sat up and put their clothes back on. He got up and helped her to her feet. Walked around to the other side of the desk and picked up the cash.

“I’ll go give him the news,” he said.

Storm combed her fingers through her hair. “Don’t,” she said. “Just . . . he’s got a family. We’ll talk about it later. We’ll figure something out.” She walked over to the other side of the desk. She sat back down.

He reached over across the desk and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

And that was as close as they came to talking about anything.

* * *

4.

 

 

 

Logan was up before anybody else. He was always up before anybody else. In some ways, morning was what he liked best—he could think, he could work in peace, he didn’t have to answer to anyone or break up any little fights or answer any questions about what was happening today or when it was okay to swim or what shoes were good for playing basketball.

In other ways, morning was the worst.

He thought back to his life before, to the mornings he’d spent in the Canadian Rockies, waking up alone, brewing coffee over a grate, wondering where he could go to buy a newspaper. Wondering if time would always pass so slowly, if every day would always be so indistinguishable from the next, and if so, if that would always be such a bad thing.

Now he spent his early mornings slipping off to have a cigar and counting down the minutes until it was okay to wake up Storm.

He paced quietly down the hallway and thought about ducking into the rec room to watch a little TV. It was just beginning to grow light outside. Not getting light quite as early as it used to—the summer was arching into late July.

When he heard whispering, he stopped moving. Took stock. He knew it wasn’t anything to be alarmed about—he didn’t have that sense. But he suspected that a couple of the kids had gotten up early or had never gone to bed. He must have missed them when he did the count last night.

The whispering was coming from the den. He assumed his authoritative posture and prepared to tell them off. But suddenly the whispering stopped, and the noise changed. It became the unmistakable sound of kissing—and decisive kissing, serious kissing. Making out, the kind of making out done by adults, not by twelve-year-olds. He groaned quietly and wondered who or what the hell he was going to find in the den. Then the kissing stopped, and the talking resumed.

Logan paused next to the door. And listened. And knew, right away, who the voices belonged to.

“I just . . . This is such bullshit.”

“Why is it bullshit?”

“Because I have to leave now. I have to go to college.”

The other voice chuckled. “You’re not going that far. We can see each other on the weekends.”

Logan sagged against the wall. Closed his eyes and listened.

“I’m going to hate college.”

“You’re not. Trust me.”

“Then why did you leave Princeton?”

There was a pause. “That was different.”

“How was it different? People hate mutants everywhere, right? It doesn’t matter where you go to school. There are always haters. Fuck it, I don’t want to go.”

Peter’s voice sounded so wounded, so exasperated. Logan hadn’t heard him like that before. To be honest, Logan hadn’t heard much from Peter before at all—the kid was quiet. Always drawing.

“First of all,” Warren said, “Princeton’s a tough place. Everyone in my family had gone there. That’s why I went there. But it’s shit. Everyone there is perfect, and there was just no way I could fit in. I mean, the Worthington name is on, like, half the buildings there. Everyone knew who I was and who my father was. I couldn’t catch a break from any of the lame-ass professors. And it was worse when the liberal kids tried to dig my mutation, or talk to me about civil rights bullshit.” He cleared his throat. “Second of all? You don’t stand out.”

“I always stand out,” Peter said.

“Come on. Don’t be a dumbass. You can go anywhere.” Warren chuckled. “When I was a freshman I tried to go to a U2 concert and couldn’t get in because the security guard thought I had a bomb on my back.”

“What did you do?”

“What do you think I did? I left. A better person would have shown them what he had, because fuck them, but I’m a coward. I just went away. I’m just telling you that you’re lucky. To be able to pass.”

“That’s some bullshit, man. That’s what I’m talking about. You shouldn’t have to show anything to anybody.”

Logan knew he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but he was riveted, and he didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because Peter and Warren never shown this side of themselves to him—they were always so private and reserved. Warren especially. But now Warren was telling Peter how it was, and Peter was just so damn raw. Logan had never heard two young guys talk like that. He suspected that they were high, but he couldn’t pick up any trace of marijuana.

Now they were kissing again. Logan straightened and started to walk away. Then they resumed talking. Logan stood still.

“Purchase is a good opportunity for you. Their art program is great. You’re going to love it there.”

“I love you,” Peter said. “I just love you so damn much.”

“Dude! It’s not even that far. It’s like, half an hour away,” Warren said, laughing. But he was laughing, Logan knew, to cover up the fact that he was beginning to cry.

“What if it sucks?”

“You’ll still have me. And Christ, it’s only four years.”

They were quiet for a minute. No kissing. Then Peter said, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Warren said, sniffling. “I hope Storm and Logan will let me stay.”

“They’ll let you stay. But what about your degree?”

“I have to look into that.”

Peter was quiet. Then he gasped. “Dude, what are you doing?”

“That thing you like.”

“Jesus, man, not here. The door’s open.”

“Nobody’s up yet. Relax.”

And Peter’s breath rolled into even waves.

Logan slowly and carefully backed away. He wasn’t going to interrupt them—no way in hell—but that he didn’t want to hear. Oh, anywhere but the den. He liked to meditate in there. Yeah, not anymore.

But he couldn’t ignore the fact that the whole scene had been so, well, heart-wrenching. As he walked down the hall he felt sad and overwhelmed—and then exhausted. These two kids—these two guys! He just couldn’t believe them. He wondered what was going to happen to them.

The rest of the morning passed slowly. He didn’t get a chance to talk to Storm, and the cook had an issue with the gluten-free kids, so there was that to deal with. He finally found Storm in her office after lunch. He came inside and shut the door.

“Oh good,” she said. “I wanted to ask you about the sump pump.”

The sump pump—Christ, she was so romantic! “Peter’s gay,” he said.

Storm stared at him.

He took a breath and continued. “I overheard him and Warren in the den this morning. Together.”

Storm’s gaze remained fixed on him. “Oh. Oh, really.”

“They didn’t know I was there.”

“And they were having sex?”

“Well—no,” Logan said, holding up his hands. “Not at first.” He stopped. He shouldn’t have said that. He hoped Storm wouldn’t get mad about the sex. She had this thing against sex on school grounds. (Except where they were concerned, of course.) “It was really kind of intense. It was . . . weird. To hear them like that.”

She was quiet. She seemed to be processing. Then she said, “I hope they’re okay. Maybe I should talk to them.”

“Don’t do that,” he said, dropping into the chair in front of her desk. “They’re old enough. Warren’s twenty for God’s sake. I just . . . wonder what the hell we’re doing here sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re a team. And we don’t know these basic fucking things about each other. How I am supposed to trust these kids when I don’t even know if they’re gay or straight or hooking up or what?”

“So you feel differently about them knowing that they’re gay.”

He rubbed his hand against his thigh. “No, come on, give me a break, Storm. I don’t care if they’re gay. I care that I don’t know them. How can you fight next to a guy if you don’t know him? It’s a problem. Tell me you didn’t know everything about Scott and Jean.”

She blinked slowly. Nodded. Then looked up at him again. “Scott and Jean were my peers. With this team it’s different. It’s like you and I are in the role of the professor. Scott and Jean and I didn’t tell him everything, especially not in terms of who we were sleeping with or what we were feeling. In fact, we tried to keep a great deal from him. But it never worked, of course. He always knew everything.”

“We’re not the professor,” Logan said.

“Maybe they just want their privacy. That’s understandable.”

“Do you think they’re afraid that we might judge them?”

Storm crossed her legs and leaned forward. “I hope not. I mean—I hope we haven’t given them that impression. Have we?”

He shook his head and looked away.

He didn’t want to be the guy people told their problems to—and he definitely didn’t want to be the guy two gay dudes told their problems to. Really. But he remembered back to a year ago, back to the summer after the professor died, back when he was trying to figure out whether or not to stay. In those days, Rogue had often come to him to talk about things—her doubts about taking the cure, her relationship with Bobby. He hadn’t necessarily enjoyed hearing so much about a teenage girl’s private life—especially since so much of that private life was uncomfortable—but he understood that she just needed to tell someone, and he appreciated that she trusted him.

Then things changed. She stopped talking. Stopped cornering him after dinner. He wondered what she did with her thoughts now, where she put them. Perhaps she wrote them down. Perhaps she told them to Kitty. But he doubted that. He suspected that she just carried them with her or willed them to go away. That was how children became adults, he knew—they learned to put down their quirks.

He missed her.

“Logan,” Storm said quietly. “Logan, what’s wrong?”

He looked up to find Storm peering at him, her eyes softening with concern.

“I want people to know about us,” he said.

Storm sat back.

“Please don’t say it,” he said. He rolled his eyes.

“What?”

“That there is no us.”

She didn’t move.

When he looked up at her again, he saw that she was hurt. She was tense. Her shoulders were tight. “I wasn’t going to say that.” She uncrossed her legs and pulled her chair closer to her desk and reached for a folder. She opened it and began to read.

“Storm—”

“You must be insane if you think that people don’t know about us.”

They sat in silence. Storm picked up a pen and twirled it between her fingers, her eyes skimming over the paperwork in front of her. He didn’t move.

“I thought—”

“We live,” she said, “in a small boarding school with several telepaths and empaths and other kids with various intuitive gifts.” She looked up from the file. “And just so you know? You are the only thing I think about.”

He hunched forward and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said. “I have to get some work done.”

“Then why all the secrecy, huh? Why all the sneaking around?”

“We’re not sneaking around.”

“Sure feels like it.”

“I like my privacy,” she said, setting her pen down with a certain firmness that he read as anger. “I like a degree of discretion. I don’t like everyone to know what I’m doing at any given moment, or what’s going on in my bedroom. But if you think that I’ve been trying to hide—” She gestured to the space between them. “You’re mistaken.”

Logan pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Turn this around. Make it seem like I’m the one dragging ass about this whole thing.”

“Logan.” Storm stood. “You can’t blame me for—I mean, how can you say—do you even want this?”

“I just told you that I want people to know about us!”

The air around them seemed to decompress.

Storm sighed and spread her hands on her desk. She tilted her head up to look at him. “Why?”

“Why? Because I want to be with you. I don’t know how much plainer I can make it, darlin’.” He pushed the chair in and turned around.

He thought she’d sit down again and go back to working, and that that would be the end of it—whatever “it” was—but instead she peeled away from the desk and headed to the window in the back of the room. She crossed her arms in front her and looked out onto the terrace.

“Don’t cry,” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m not crying.”

Outside the window, a summer breeze tossed the branches of the trees. It was sunny but windy.

“You should,” he said, taking a step toward her. “So I could tell you not to.”

###

She told him to go up to her bedroom, and that she’d be there in twenty minutes. (He liked that—liked it when she told him what to do.) He went upstairs, took off his clothes, got into the bed, and waited.

She had the window open.

He always griped about the fact that she kept the window open. It was hard on the air conditioner, he said. It drove up the bill. But as he lay in her bed, he let himself enjoy the smell of the air outside—the faintly humid smell of cut grass and pollen.

When she came, she shut the door behind her and took off her clothes so that he could see her. Then she slipped into bed beside him. Began doing the things he liked, and a few new things too. Left a trail of saliva between his navel and his hipbone. Then made love to him, climbing on top of him, steadying herself on his shoulders. He held her there as she moved against him. He thrust into her. His toes curled as he came. Afterwards, she brushed his hair back from his forehead and kissed him there.

They lay together afterwards. He didn’t want to talk or get up or do much of anything. The breeze flowed in through the open window, and the sweat dried on his body.

Her hand was on his chest. “I’m not advocating that we hide anything,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea that we advertise what we are to the kids. They’re so young. And some of them have parents who might think the wrong things. Technically? I’m your boss. So this is sexual harassment.”

“Quid pro quo, huh?” He traced her shoulder with his thumb. “Where’s my bonus?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of creating a hostile work environment,” she said. Her fingers grazed his right hip.

He thought they might have sex again, but instead she just kissed him and made a promise. She said she had to get up, had to get back to the job. “You need to rest,” she told him. “You look exhausted.”

He figured that he would get up and get dressed after she left, but he surprised himself by staying in bed. He lay there until he heard the kids clamor downstairs for dinner.

###

In August, the feds finally arrested and indicted several members of the Nasty Boys. It was publicized. It was all over the TV. It was a goddamn media circus.

“Hold on, hold on,” Kitty said. “Shush.” She was in the rec room, kneeling in front of the TV. Warren and Bobby and Peter and Jubilee were on the sofa behind her. A few other kids were milling around in the background. Two of them had been playing checkers on the table, but now they looked up and stared at the TV.

Logan stood in the back of the room, arms crossed. He leaned against the wall. Rogue sat in a chair in the corner reading a book, her legs crossed. Logan could tell that she was trying to feign disinterest.

“Look, there!” Kitty exclaimed, pointing at the TV. “That’s him. There’s my guy!”

The TV showed one of the Nasty Boys being led from the courthouse in shackles. The reporter was saying that he’d been denied bail and would be awaiting trial in federal prison. “. . . both state and federal law enforcement agents worked together to foil what some authorities say would have been the deadliest terror attack since Alcatraz . . .”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. The segment ended and the newscaster started talking about the economy. Then Bobby said, “It’s such a thankless job.”

“Not one mention,” Peter said.

“Hey,” Warren said, leaning back on the sofa, his shoulder touching Peter’s. “What matters is that Kitty saved a lot of innocent people.” He glanced over at her and nodded. “Good job.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling.

Bobby started to clap. The other kids joined in, even the kids in the back of the room. Somebody whooped. Kitty blushed, but Logan could tell that she was secretly pleased.

“Stand up and take a bow,” Bobby said.

“Bobby, I am not—”

“I think you’re all being really stupid.”

Logan glanced at the corner of the room. Rogue was standing, her book tucked under her arm.

They all turned to look at Rogue. Kitty glanced up from where she was sitting.

“I mean, come on,” Rogue said. “Why are you so happy? Now these guys know who you are—they know who she is—” She pointed at Kitty. “They know who made the case against them, they know who turned them in. What if the case doesn’t make, Kitty? What if they get off? Jesus, did you ever consider that?”

“Rogue—”

“The first thing they’re going to do is track her down and kill her.” Rogue’s eyes darted over to Logan. “I can’t believe you hadn’t thought about this.”

“Rogue,” Kitty said. “The case is going to make.” She stood in front of the TV and clasped her hands together. “It’s a total slam-dunk.”

“And so what? These people have friends, Kitty. What if someone tracks you down at college?”

Kitty smirked. “Then I guess Yale will become a pretty interesting place.”

“It’s not funny,” Rogue said. “You’re putting other people in danger.”

Warren turned to look at Rogue for the first time during the conversation. He and Rogue did their best not to cross paths in the mansion. Probably, Logan suspected, because Warren was the kid who almost lost his life trying to avoid the antidote his father had invented for him—and she was the girl who had run straight for it.

“Rogue,” Bobby said, standing from the couch. He assumed a posture that reminded Logan very much of—he hated to admit this—Scott. “You’re right, it’s not an ideal situation, but someone has to do this. And that’s us. Think of all the people Kitty saved. And at college, we’re taking precautions. Living alone and stuff.”

Rogue clutched her book. “Whatever.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and walked past them and out of the room.

Bobby exchanged glances with Kitty. Then he moved toward the mouth of the room.

Logan reached out and stopped him. “Just let it go,” he said.

Bobby seemed deflated. He turned and went back into the rec room to join his friends.

###

Logan didn’t go talk to Rogue after the little dispute in the rec room. He figured it was best to let it blow over.

He found Kitty later that evening in the kitchen. She was often in the kitchen after hours, mixing things up and trying new recipes. She liked to cook. On this night, she was steaming some milk to make some coffee. Kitty was addicted to coffee. She smiled when she saw him walk in. “Do you want a cup?”

“No thanks.” He sat down on the stool next to the counter.

She poured some milk into a mug. Then she started crushing some mint leaves.

“So you and Bobby,” he said.

She stopped crushing the leaves and looked up. “Did he say something?”

“No,” Logan said. “I just made a bet with myself that you’re a couple, and that I could get you slip up.”

Kitty went back to work. She cleared her throat. After a few long moments, she said, “We’re just trying to keep it quiet. Because of, you know.”

“Rogue,” Logan said.

“Nobody else knows but you.”

Logan thought for a minute. He thought Kitty was right to be concerned about Rogue—not least of all because of amount of explaining that would need to be done—but he also felt that the concern was unnecessary. Rogue didn’t need protecting. She could handle whatever life threw at her. She could definitely handle the idea of Kitty and Bobby.

He liked Kitty and knew that she was very smart, and he admired her for the effortless way in which she did most things. Things came easily to her. And now, Bobby had come to her as well. He knew she was going to a college where she’d be surrounded by people who were similarly gifted, and he was glad for that. She needed to not be the smartest one in the bunch anymore. She needed to be taken down a peg or two. It would do her some good. When she came home, she’d be different. She’d be even better at what she did than before.

He left Kitty in the kitchen and made the rounds. Came across Warren in the rec room. He was playing Scrabble with three other kids. He looked up at Logan and smiled.

Storm was in her office, bent over the filing cabinet, manila folders spread out all over her desk and on the floor.

“What are you doing?” he said. “It’s late. It’s almost time for bed.”

She sighed and looked up. “I’ve been trying to pull together Peter’s medical records for college. It’s tough. He’s got these major gaps, but they won’t let him live on campus unless they have proof that his vaccinations are up to date.” She sifted through some files on her desk. “We had to pull so many strings just to get him into college. His past is such a mystery. He has no family. Peter isn’t even his real name. It’s his American name. We don’t even know his birthday.”

“Can’t we just . . . take him to the doctor and have him vaccinated there?”

Storm closed the file. “That’s what we’re going to have to do. He hates doctors, though. And for good reason.”

And they no longer had a doctor on staff.

“There’s nothing you can do about it tonight,” he said.

She set the files on her desk and sat back. “I know. I just have a hard time letting things go.”

He crossed his arms and sighed. “I can’t believe it’s time for them to go.”

“It is that time,” she said.

He pulled out the chair and sat down. “It’s going to be so different here. So . . . quiet.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Storm chuckled. “Don’t worry, it’ll never be quiet here.”

Logan didn’t laugh. He didn’t say anything.

The smile dropped from Storm’s face. “Oh, Logan.” She studied him. “It’s empty-nest syndrome.”

“What? No. No, it isn’t.”

“It is,” she said, and laughed some more. “You poor thing. Don’t worry. It’ll get easier. And we have six new students starting this fall. Six new kids for you to boss around. I’m sure you’ll terrify them.”

He glanced up. He still wasn’t laughing. “I just don’t know why Rogue has to go so far. Peter’s just going down the road. Why couldn’t she have gone to that school?”

Storm stopped laughing. She seemed thoughtful. “I think she needs a new start. I think it will be good for her.”

He scratched his chin. “I don’t know what happened there. I think I let her down.”

“Oh, no. No, Logan, that’s not what’s happening.”

“The cure thing,” he said. He was certain that Storm would agree with him, that she’d pin Rogue’s change in behavior on the cure.

“No, it’s just a phase,” Storm said. “That’s all.” She rose from her chair and walked over to him. Stood beside him and ran her fingers through his hair.

He leaned into her, pressing his face against her abdomen and wrapping his arms around her waist.

“She’ll come back to you,” Storm said. “Before you know it. You won’t even remember the time when you guys weren’t close friends.”

He held onto her and stayed there for a while. He just wanted to stay like that. He knew that he and Storm wouldn’t always be together—that much was certain. He didn’t like to pretend things—he wasn’t that type—but at times like this, and in the morning when he went to wake her, he pretended that things would always be this way, and that he was just like everyone else.

###

One morning, Rogue came down the stairs carrying a box. He met in her in the hallway.

“Hey kid,” he said. “What’s all that?”

She set the box down on the floor. The top flapped open. “My things. I was wondering if you could keep them for me?”

He looked down at the box. “You don’t want them with you at school?”

She shrugged. “Do you think I should take them?”

In the box were some books and notebooks and a stitched satin pillow. (She was asking him permission.)

“I think we can find a place here.” He reached down and picked up the box and balanced it against his hip. “When are we taking you up there?”

She laced her thumbs through her belt loops and looked up at him. “You can? You can drive me up there?”

“Well, what else? Were you planning on taking a bus?”

She said that her orientation started on Thursday.

Kitty and Bobby had families to help them move into college (even Bobby’s family, who was less than enthusiastic that he’d decided to embrace being a mutant, decided to help him pay for college), and Warren said that he was planning to help Peter later that weekend. Logan figured he’d drive Rogue up by himself, but then Storm offered to come along. She said that they could leave Warren in charge, and that she trusted him.

So they started out early on Thursday morning. Plattsburgh was nearly five hours away. Rogue sat in the backseat along with a packaged comforter and some plastic drawers and other things she’d bought with her employee discount at Walmart.

“Are you looking forward to this?” Storm said. She was just trying to make conversation.

“Yeah, sure,” Rogue said.

Logan wished he could have a cigar. He was the one driving. Storm was going to drive the way back.

For most of the ride, they didn’t talk.

When they got to campus, Storm and Logan helped Rogue move things into her dorm room. Storm cleaned out her drawers. Then they all introduced themselves to Rogue’s new roommate, a blond girl named Becky, and Becky’s family. Becky’s family seemed nice, but they eyed Storm and Logan carefully as if trying to figure out their relationship to Rogue. Storm and Logan were, after all, much younger-looking than most of the parents milling around campus.

Rogue said that she had to go to the financial aid office.

“You want us to come?” Storm said.

They walked down the hallway together, the hallway that smelled of old socks.

Rogue seemed to carefully consider the proposition. “That’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” Storm said. “Sometimes those financial aid lines can be long. We could keep you company.”

They headed for the stairwell.

“No, that’s okay,” Rogue said. “You’ll probably want to get on the road. It’s late already.”

“It’s not that late,” Logan said.

“Warren’s probably going crazy,” Rogue said. “I bet Jones and Artie have him flying up to the attic or something.”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” Storm said.

Outside in the late-afternoon August heat, Storm and Logan and Rogue stood looking at each other in the parking lot. Rogue tucked her hands in her back pockets. “Thanks for bringing me,” she said.

“No problem,” Storm said.

Logan reached into his pocket and took out a cell phone. “Listen Rogue. You need anything, you call me.”

“Logan, you didn’t have to get me a cell phone. Jesus Christ.”

“I mean it.” He pressed it into her hand. “Anything.”

“Okay,” she said. She swallowed. “Thanks.”

“And don’t let anyone pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to do,” he said.

“Logan,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not going to do anything.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “But just don’t.”

She put the cell phone in her pocket.

An awkward moment passed.

Storm reached out and hugged Rogue. “You probably want to get going. How long does the dining hall stay open?”

Rogue said she wasn’t sure. She reached over and hugged Logan, very lightly. He patted the top of her head.

“Thanks guys,” she said, pulling away. “Okay.” She turned away from them.

“Call us,” Storm said.

“I will,” Rogue said softly, walking in the other direction.

Storm and Logan turned to go find the car. They walked in silence for a moment. Logan said, “This is a nice place.”

“It is,” Storm said. “But you’ve already seen it.”

“It looks better when the sun is shining,” he said, but to be honest he didn’t care that the sun was shining. He was talking to keep himself from thinking. Thinking about how quickly all of this had come.

Then he heard footsteps pounding the pavement behind him, and he knew it was her. He turned.

Rogue was there. He opened his arms to her. She was crying. She pressed herself against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her.

He heard Storm say something, touch his back and then walk off to get the car. He just stood there and held Rogue. She sniffled against his shirt.

“I want to call you every day,” she said through her tears.

He stroked her hair. “You can do that. And if you need anything, I’ll come up here.”

She cinched her arms around him and squeezed. Then she let go of him again and turned and walked away as suddenly as she came. He could hear her sniffling as she retreated. He watched her as she walked back to the building. He didn’t pretend not to feel sad. Even if he’d experienced this before, he hadn’t. It was all so sudden, and it was all so new. He turned and walked back to the car.

* * *

 

 


End file.
